The dance theatre piece “Kim” is based on the novel “Wo auch immer ihr seid” by the award-winning Berlin journalist Khuê Pham, in which she deals with the effects of the Vietnam War (or the “American War”, as it is called in Vietnam) and the resulting dispersion of her family to several continents. Kim stands for the German name the protagonist gives herself in order to escape the constant questions about the pronunciation of her Vietnamese name and her origins. The book describes the feeling of being lost between cultures, the speechlessness about the past and the relativity of concepts such as good and evil.

Against the background of the book’s story, the German-Taiwanese choreographer Fang Yun Lo, together with Khuê Pham and five dancers, all of whom have intercultural experience, explores the protracted search for identity of young people from immigrant families. In an impressive mixture of dance, literature and film, they ask questions that affect everyone: What made me the person I am today? Who are my parents – and how do historical catastrophes affect the lives of entire generations?

The dancers take on the characters in the book, but at the same time tell their own stories and those of their families. The result is a moving panorama – of the time before the war in Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s, to the connections with the GDR and current experiences in Ukraine, where families of Vietnamese origin have to flee again.

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